Who knew? Not like you can easily or reliably sex puffers, but 2 months after putting two brown puffers (T. turgidis) into a 60g fresh to brackish tank, they went from daily stand-offs out of their corresponding ends of the tank to doing the forbidden dance for about 6 hours. Shortly thereafter, one chases the other away and takes residency over a nest of approximately 30-40 eggs - I believe therefore declaring himself as the male.

Fast forward 4 days (today) and almost if not all of the eggs remain clear and now have clearly visible fry in almost every one, and the little buggers are fairly mobile, leading to my dilemma and plea for advice.

1) I have not set-up a fry/hospital tank and, at this point, doubt I have time to with any hope of cycling it to be safe to transfer the fry once they hatch. I have a breeding cage/basket in the water awaiting the fry hatching. Do I transfer the fry to the basket, or just give nature/dad the chance to do its/his thing?

2) If transferring fry to the cage, I have frozen brine shrimp at the ready (no, not hatching my own - sinful, I know). That enough for starters? Any info on how much/how often/and of what?

Any and all input, advice, and/or links to resources (of which my interweb search so far has yielded little if any information) is appreciated. Everyone I talk to from the lfs that sold me the puffers to any big box pet store I walk into for advice just keeps saying how rare/unusual it is to have this happen.

You can instantly cycle any tank using Tatra's Safestart. Tiny fry may need something smaller than BBS, like insuforia. There is an article on Suvattii breeding in our Library that might help. Good luck!

You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...